Spring has Sprung!

I hope everyone had a wonderful spring break with their children! I had a terrific time with my boys, Bailey and Carter, who are 16 months old now. They continue to love their Tuesday evening Kindermusik classes, and I have already enrolled them in 2 sessions in the summer. If you are interested in enrolling your child(ren) in Kindermusik for the summer, please go to the web-site, www.ourmusictime.com

Kindergarten and first graders are both beginning to work more extensively with the xylophones, metallophones, and glockenspiels.

Second Graders are learning about musical phrase length, extensions of ABA form, and notating do,re, mi, so, la on the musical staff.

Third graders are preparing for their performance on May 20 at the IHES Night of the Arts. The performance is a culmination of the study of animal vocabulary in French, the art work of the French composer Henri Rousseau, and "The Carnival of the Animals" by French composer Charles Camille Saint- Saens. Each 3rd grade class has been studying one of the 14 movements in Saint-Saens work.

Fourth Grade began "Mallet Madness" this week. "Mallet Madness" involves the entire instrumentarium in our music classroom. This week we worked on playing rhythms dictated by myself. When students became comfortable with echoing my given rhythms, they then took turns being the "teacher". I was very pleased with their ability to improvise rhythms for their fellow classmates to echo play on their instruments. We will continue with "Mallet Madness" activities in the coming weeks.

Fifth grade has completed Recorder Karate. I am so proud of all of the students who practiced and actively participated in belt testing! Some of the students will perform on recorders at the IHES Night of the Arts on May 20. The black belt song for "Recorder Karate" is Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" from his Ninth Symphony. This week we began studying about Beethoven's life by reading about him in The Lives of Musicians: The Good Times, The Bad Times, (and What the Neighbors Thought). We also began to watch the DVD Beethoven Lives Upstairs.

**I have posted a project on Donor's Choose.com to raise money to purchase more instruments for our music room. You may view and donate to the project by visiting this web-site:http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=374852&verify=-1351871806
Thank you for your support!